On this week, Israeli special forces raided one of the biggest houses in western Gaza City, stormed a block of residences and dragged out the man who was running Hamas's security unit in the organization's truce period, but virtually the ceasefire that was supposed to have made Gaza quiet was in its infancy, having lasted close to a year.

The operation by Shin Bet and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the Katiba area of the Rimal district resulted in the wounding, capture and airlifting into Israeli hands of Muein al-Arabid, who is also known as Moein al-Arabid or Moin al-Arabeed. The operation is the deepest and most impactful one since the October 2025 truce came into effect within Hamas' de facto control of Gaza, and it comes at a time when the wider peace agreement sponsored by Washington is beginning to flex.

By all accounts other than the Hamas' own, Al-Arabid was no ordinary operative. He is the head of counterintelligence and internal security for all of Gaza, Israeli officials say, which is why several commentators have dubbed him “Gaza's own secret police.” His responsibilities were to track down suspected collaborators, to save what was left of Hamas's top leadership and to keep an eye on the tunnel infrastructure and communications.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even went further, accusing al-Arabid of being responsible for the hiding and movement of the hostages taken during the October 7, 2023, massacre, and its work to restore Hamas’s military strength, consolidate its control in the northern region of Gaza and mislead mediators regarding the disarmament terms.

The mechanics of the raid, pieced together from several sources, depict a messier affair than the official statements from the raid put forward. Police officers of Shin Bet, allegedly with the help of a local anti-Hamas militia backed by Israel, raided a building near al-Arabid's residence. There was an almost instant firefight. Israeli planes, including drones, dropped down on several nearby sites to provide cover for the extraction team and said that a "massive barrage" of gunfire and successive air raids was observed, which lasted nearly an hour.

Al-Arabid was shot and wounded before being taken out and his bodyguards did not survive, while Palestinian sources state that his wife was killed and a son was wounded when the strikes around the house took place. Israeli personnel have not been injured. Clips of a man thought to be al-Arabid were released by Al Jazeera, showing him crawling and trying to conceal himself, which have been widely shared in Arabic and Israeli media.

Hamas has not confirmed who the man it lost is. One security source told Al Jazeera that the detainee was not the internal security chief but rather one of his junior officers, and the official statement of the group dodged the issue of who was detained, instead accusing the raid of being a war crime and a violation of the ceasefire. Only a high-ranking member of the Hamas counterintelligence corps admitting his mistake would be a serious morale boost and a damaging shift in the group's strategic calculation of internal threat, at a moment in which it is already feeling handicapped in controlling the Gaza Strip.

Target is as important as timing. After two phases, the Gaza ceasefire called for by the US-backed Board of Peace framework has reached a milestone of first exchanging hostages and secondly, allowing for a limited Israeli withdrawal, but it has failed to take a step to the second, much more difficult, part of the deal.

That step calls for Hamas to disarm, Israel to make additional withdrawals, an international stabilizing force to be deployed and a technocratic Palestinian administration to assume control of civil affairs. It has not been moved at all. Netanyahu has publicly challenged parts of the roadmap, the Board itself has refused to make Israel "independently" adhere to the ceasefire conditions if Hamas really stop holding weapons, and a recent regional tour led by U.S. envoy Jared Kushner did not yield any apparent progress. Hamas's political leadership has maintained contacts with the Egyptian and Qatari mediators while failing to make any significant progress.

Independent organisations monitoring the ceasefire have recorded at least 30 ceasefire violations in the last fortnight alone, such as strikes, arrests and at least 1 of the hearings, that of a Hamas commander in the town of Jabaliya, the same night as the al-Arabid raid. A truce that is nominally in effect since last October has claimed the lives of over 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza and four Israeli soldiers, according to health officials on both sides, who highlight the new loose use of the term "ceasefire.

But lurking behind the security issue is an economic reality which often receives far less attention. The total reconstruction and recovery cost of Gaza has been estimated at $71.4 billion for the next 10 years by a joint assessment by the United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank, while $26.3 billion is needed in the first 18 months to provide basic services and ensure the resumption of economic activity.

Much of that cost, about $16.2 billion, is for housing, followed by agriculture and food systems at $10.5 billion, health at $10 billion, and trade and industry at about $9 billion. Each successive raid, strike or hostage-related explosion further pushes back the timeline when donor governments and private investors will become comfortable enough to free up that investment, and that is when ordinary Gazans will finally begin to enjoy some peace dividends.

The al-Arabid operation is a sign of the fact that neither side feels the current situation is anything close to a negotiated peace. For the Israelis, it's an invitation to continue the “weekly” destruction of Hamas' leadership, regardless of the calendar. Every one of these attacks provides Hamas new grounds for refusing to give up its arms as it claims it is doing so under a ceasefire it says is being continually broken.